Happy Easter Weekend!

Happy Belated Easter everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic Easter filled with lots of candy! I know I didn’t. Easter isn’t really a big holiday here, except those who are Christian do go to Church, I’m sure. Other than that though, people don’t really know about Easter or the Easter bunny or anything. I’ve been teaching my classes about it, and on Friday, I decided to have an Easter Egg Hunt. This idea came from my friend, Stef, because I couldn’t find a way to make it fun for everyone and not have to give out a million pieces of candy. I printed out 50 paper Easter eggs and wrote questions on the back that pertained to Easter and what we learned about in class. I hid them all on Thursday night after school (I stayed until 5:30pm because there were still students hanging around). The next day, the students looked for the eggs, answered the question on the back, and came to me for their candy. Most of the eggs got found, although I think there are still a few out there somewhere. The ones who found eggs were so happy. I think they really like the premise of Easter because of all the candy we get. I told them about peeps and practically every class was awestruck by the thought of marshmallow. They have it here, but it’s expensive, and they certainly don’t have marshmallow animals rolled in sugar! The hunt went over really well, and I think I’ll try to get real, plastic Easter Eggs next year. That was basically the extent of our Easter festivities. Gianni did do a really difficult Easter Egg scavenger hunt on Saturday with some of our friends. They gave up eventually because it was so hard.

I wasn’t able to make it though because I had an overnight training trip with Touch Daegu, the city of Daegu’s tourist blog. I am now an official blogger. I have to submit between one and three articles per week, and I can make up to $50 a month for them. The training started off with an opening ceremony at Daegu City Hall where the other three new bloggers (Katie, Chelsea, and Krissi) and I were presented with certificates of employment from the city. They are very official-looking. We also got real North Face windbreakers that are blue and orange and a bag that converts to a fanny pack. We shook hands with the head of the Daegu Tourist Organization and introduced ourselves to everyone. I did my introduction in Korean, and I was super nervous because I was the first foreigner to go! I heard a few people going, “wow,” so I guess it went over well. There are five girls who write for the Touch Daegu blog, but there’s also a Korean version that has a larger audience, so there are 25 Korean people who work for the Korean blog. After some group pictures, we all piled into a tour bus and headed for Jurisan. It’s a beautiful area with mountains surrounding it. There isn’t much up there besides hotels and a few restaurants because most people go up there strictly to hike. We had Korean food for lunch and then we were separated from the Koreans to get our own training in English. I think the Koreans actually got lectures about how to take good photos and how to write better from actual professionals. Our training was with the blog editor, a really nice Korean woman named Gin. She went into the details of what we were going to be doing, specifically, and that was about it. All the trainees went out for barbeque for dinner. We all felt bad because our editor’s friend, Amy, basically cooked our meat for us because she saw us struggling. Oh well! After dinner we had some free time, and they had given us free passes to the spa attached to our hotel. One of the other girls, Chelsea, and I decided to check it out. There were only a few people there because the spa was closing in a half hour, so it was nice not to have anyone staring at the naked white girls. The spa pools ranged in temperature from wicked hot to wicked cold, and there was a nice outdoor pool. The weather in Korea has been so perfect recently, so it was nice to go out there. Don’t worry! The view of the pools was blocked by tall walls. Afterwards, I went back to my room and did my Korean homework and read before bed. It’s a typical Korean-style hotel where you sleep on the floor. Albeit, the rooms were much larger than in other places I’ve been. Katie and I shared a room, and we had a living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. The next morning, the hotel had a buffet breakfast for the guests, so that was tasty. Then, we headed out to some scenic locations to get some tips about taking good pictures from a few professional photographers. First, we went down the street from the hotel to a small museum kind of place with a part outside. The park was lined with pinwheels and had lots of sculptures inside. Although it was nice to be outside and taking pictures, it does get a little bit on my nerves when Koreans decide they have to take pictures with the foreigners just because we are foreign. There were times when we got swamped by the Korean bloggers to have our pictures taken. It got kind of frustrating. I wanted a picture with just the foreigners, and I had to ask a man to please wait in order to get that. This isn’t the first time it happened to me in Korea, and I’m sure it’s not the last time it will happen. The day before, they had us sit in on the Korean training sessions for a few minutes to take our pictures pretending we understood what was going on. And at special events in town, the photographers always look for foreigners to take pictures with. So this kind of thing is pretty common. Still, it was a beautiful park and a beautiful day. We went to a small store and tried some of the juice that is popular in Jurisan. I thought it was good, but some of the other girls thought it was bad. The berry itself is ovular, red, and smooth, and I thought it tasted something like cranberry or cherry. Our next stop was a Korean restaurant for some lunch and then to a big park across from the restaurant. The park was lovely. There were ponds with big fish, lots of trees, bamboo, and beautiful purple flower bushes. It was very pleasant and peaceful walking around taking pictures. That was our last stop before heading back to Daegu. It was a very nice weekend, and I am so excited to start blogging for Touch Daegu.

When I got back, Gianni and I decided to get an Easter dinner with Maria, Matthew, and our new friend who lives in their neighborhood, Colette. They took us to a pizza place they’d been to before called Pizzeria. It’s right in downtown, and it was delicious! I got a four cheese pizza and ate the whole thing! They also have pasta dishes and salads. We were all pretty tired, so we headed home after dinner. In celebration of Easter, I ate one of the Cadbury cream eggs my mom sent me a while ago. I was saving it to eat on Easter. It really hit the spot!

This week, Gianni and I have been trying to make sure we get to taekwondo. I am going to write about Gym Hae Dong as my first blog post for Touch Daegu, actually.  Last week, Gianni and I, surprisingly, got our blue belts! We’re now only 3 away from having our black belts! The week before last was our actual belt test, but March and April have been difficult months for us. We’ve been really busy with Korean class and starting school again, so we haven’t been going to taekwondo as much. Therefore, we didn’t pass our belt test on the actual day. Master Hwang told us we could retest last week, and we were planning on it. We were practicing our forms the day before what we thought would be our retest, and I guess we were showing effort, so Master Hwang just decided to change our belts! It was really nice of him to do. So Gianni and I are both blue belts, and our Korean classes are almost over, so we will be working harder in the next few months to get our brown and red belts and, finally, to get our black ones.